September 12, 2019 — The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory.

It was the summer of 1994. A few days earlier, he had collected a generous haul, 20 buckets of the thin-shelled, cold-water clams, which burrow a foot deep into the sand along a 13-mile stretch of beach near Barra del Chuy, just south of the Brazilian border. Agüero had been digging up these clams since childhood, a livelihood passed on for generations along these shores.

But on this day, Agüero returned to find a disastrous sight: the beach covered in dead clams.

“Kilometer after kilometer, as far as our eyes could see. All of them dead, rotten, opened up,” remembered Agüero, now 70. “They were all black, and had a fetid odor.”

He wept at the sight.

The clam die-off was an alarming marker of a new climate era, an early sign of this coastline’s transformation. Scientists now suspect the event was linked to a gigantic blob of warm water extending from the Uruguayan coast far into the South Atlantic, a blob that has only gotten warmer in the years since.

August 9th, 2019 — Last year Maine’s harvest of soft-shell clams was one of the worst in many decades, down to around 7 million pounds. That’s due in part to closures of polluted flats, and predation by the invasive green crab.

But harvesters and other observers say the fishery can bounce back — and new efforts to better protect the resource are emerging in more than a dozen coastal towns.

The Medomak River is Maine’s most prolific softshell clam fishery, and Glen Melvin has been picking them from the mudflats here, off and on, for more than four decades. Steering a beat-up aluminum outboard downstream from Waldoboro, Melvin sports a multi-colored bandana and mirrored sunglasses.

The boat flies past cove after cove, which in recent years have been frequently shut down to clamming because of pollution by fecal coliform.

July 23, 2019 — Atlantic Capes Fisheries is launching a line of frozen stuffed clams and scallops for retail and foodservice.

The Fall River, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based harvester, processor, and marketer of Marine Stewardship Council-certified scallops and North Atlantic seafood is launching the new value-added seafood items under the Galilean’s Kitchen brand.

First, it will roll out Galilean’s Kitchen New England Style Stuffed Clams in a nine-count package for retail and a 36-count pack for foodservice. Then, Galilean’s Kitchen will launch Stuffed Scallops and Gourmet Stuffed Clam Flights, in four flavors: Bacon & Cheddar, Thai Chili Lime, Mediterranean, and Portuguese-style.

While the Matlaw’s brand of stuffed clams has been on the market for years, “Galilean’s Kitchen products are a much higher quality than competition,” Steve Zevitas, vice president and sales manager at Atlantic Capes, told SeafoodSource. “We are targeting the millennials with the gourmet line of flavors, Stuffed Clam Flights.”

The New England Stuffed Clams are made from sweet and briny hand-shucked Atlantic surf clams, fleet-direct from Atlantic Capes’ boats, and mixed with onions, red bell peppers, garlic, and seasoning.

July 2, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will hold four public hearings in August and September 2019 to solicit public input on the Draft Atlantic Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Excessive Shares Amendment. The Council is also soliciting written comments on the amendment through September 14, 2019.

The Excessive Shares Amendment considers a variety of approaches to ensure that no individual, corporation, or other entity acquires an excessive share of the Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog individual transferrable quota (ITQ) privileges. In addition, this action includes measures to revise the process for specifying multi-year management measures, require periodic review of the excessive share cap level, and allow adjustments to be made under the frameworkable provisions of the FMP. Lastly, this action may also revise the management objectives for the Atlantic Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Fishery Management Plan.

In addition to providing comments at any of the scoping hearings, you may submit written comments by 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time, on September 14, 2019. Written comments may be sent by any of the following methods:

May 12, 2019 — Dozens of species of fish and shellfish are caught in New England’s waters. But only a handful show up in most seafood retailers. You can probably list them: cod, haddock, scallops, clams, lobster.

Now, it’s not just anecdotal. A citizen science initiative has found that five species dominate at New England seafood counters and that some of the species that are most common out in the ocean are the rarest in our markets.

That’s largely a reflection of our food tastes but it can have ecological – as well as economic – ramifications.

So, Eating with the Ecosystem – the group that ran the citizen science project – has also released a cookbook to help us enjoy a greater diversity of seafood. It’s called Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries.

May 13, 2019 — National Fish and Seafood announced that it was immediately ceasing operations on Friday, 10 May, marking the end of its long history in the seafood business and putting 150 employees out of work.

Founded in 1979, the Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based seafood processor, which sells the Matlaw’s stuffed clam line, had been reeling financially since owner Pacific Andes filed for bankruptcy in 2016. NFS put itself up for sale, and several companies – including Red Chamber – considered purchasing it, but ultimately never did.

“Unfortunately, despite great strides we made in improving operating performance, National Fish just had too many legacy issues that prevented us from consummating a sale,” NFS President Todd Provost said in a press release.

In January 2019, NFS demanded payment from Pacific Andes, which owes NFS USD 30 million (EUR 28 million), according to court documents. Plus, NFS was paying out legal fees for its trade secrets lawsuit against Tampa Bay Fisheries for the latter half of 2018 and early 2019, before both suppliers agreed to settle the case in mid-March. And former NFS President Jack Ventola was convicted of fraudulently diverting money from the company and then not paying taxes on the income.

April 9, 2019 — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Monday, 8 April, it will consider adding new tariffs on products from the European Union, and seafood imports are on the list for potential duties.

The action stems from a World Trade Organization ruling that stated E.U. illegally subsidized airplane-maker Airbus, creating an unfair trade advantage. As a result of that ruling, the U.S. is contemplating tariffs on USD 11 billion (EUR 9.76 billion) in goods from the 28 member nations in the union.

“The E.U. has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years,” President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning. “It will soon stop!”

The announcement from Office of the U.S. Trade Representative gives a list of nine products from four E.U. members. The products include helicopters, aircraft, fuselages, and associated parts originating from France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain.

However, a second list of products the Trade Representative is considering includes products from all member nations. The products include salmon fillets, swordfish steaks, crabmeat, clams, scallops, and other seafood items.

January 14, 2019 — Clammers in New England are taking action in an attempt to reverse a fishery management council decision to close parts of Nantucket Shoals they say is crucial to their business.

When their boats go out to harvest clams, they’re also taking high resolution video and images of the surface below to show their fishing areas are not key habitats. They’re hopeful the pictures will help them in their effort to continue fishing in an area that accounts for between 50 to 80 percent of their business, according to Scott Lang, an attorney representing them.

“We intend to work very closely with the government over the next several months to provide as much data as possible so they can review the decision that they made,” Lang told SeafoodSource. “Because they made a decision in the dark. Now, we’re going to shine some light on it to see if we can get it resolved.”

Last April, the New England Fishery Management Council implemented new boundaries within the Nantucket Shoals that would allow surfclam fishermen to continue fishing within specific areas of the region. In addition, the use of bottom-tending gear was banned within boundaries, but clammers received a year extension.

January 7, 2019 — Climate change is expected to hit the Northeast pretty hard, affecting crops, ski resorts and fisheries on the coast. Here are some of our latest New England reports on climate change — from inland floods in New Hampshire, to a Connecticut forest, to a salt marsh north of Boston where there’s an invasive plant that just won’t quit.

First, climate change is affecting our health, bringing warmer temperatures that are actually rising faster in the Northeast than elsewhere in the continental U.S. That can mean more deaths from extreme heat, plus more troubles with ticks, asthma and allergies.

Warmer seasons will spell some trouble for some businesses — from fruit farmers to ski resorts. On the flip side, the changes could be a boon to some growers, and they’ll see a longer growing season.

And the report says fisheries will be affected by climate change, as Northeast ocean temperatures are rising 3 times faster than the global average. That means there will be fewer of some species, like northern shrimp, surf clams and Atlantic cod. Other species will increase, like black sea bass.

December 17, 2018 — Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to kick Massachusetts surf clam fishermen off of 80 percent of our historic Nantucket Shoals fishing grounds. Our fishery in these treacherous local waters grosses $10 million per year to the dozen or so boats and their crews, and multiples more to the South Coast fishing economy. Our catch is hand-shucked for a higher value. New Bedford, Fall River, Gloucester, and Bristol, R.I. families stand to lose hundreds of jobs.

While the council’s decision was based on habitat considerations, it rejected an option that would have allowed us to fish on about 80 percent of the available surf clam resource while allowing access to less than 20 percent of the overall habitat zone. Half of that access was, moreover, only seasonal, to protect cod spawning. The council had left the final details of “Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2” open for just this type of solution. To be able to continue our fishery, we had ourselves offered electronic monitoring at about 10 times the rate of other regional federal fisheries and volunteered to invest in years of habitat research.